I’ve noticed that some blogs magically grow followers, and others do not. Today I wanted to give some tips and tricks on how to gain followers.

I have gained quite a lot of followers over the past year (I’m still a bit baffled by how many of you are following me) and I think I might be able to help out those who are struggling.

Take notice, this is not a guide on how to make blogger friends or how to be famous or anything like that. This is just on how to gain followers and increase engagement. For me, engagement (commenting, liking, reading, sharing, etc) is still much of a mystery, so I’ll be mainly talking about followers.

The TackleTBR readathon started on September 11 and ended on September 24. More information about the readathon is here! My initial TBR is over here but I will go through it once more to see how many of my goals I was able to reach.

I am well aware of the controversy surrounding this book. I’ve read a lot of negative reviews, but I also have read positive reviews. Still, I was really looking forward to reading this book and I am glad I did.

27 Hours by Tristina Wright

Rumor Mora fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill, and failure. Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish.

But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them.

Nyx Llorca keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she’s in love with Dahlia, her best friend. Braeden Tennant wants two things: to get out from his mother’s shadow, and to unlearn Epsilon’s darkest secret.

They’ll both have to commit treason to find the truth.

During one twenty-seven-hour night, if they can’t stop the war between the colonies and the monsters from becoming a war of extinction, the things they wish for will never come true, and the things they fear will be all that’s left.

27 Hours is a sweeping, thrilling story featuring a stellar cast of queer teenagers battling to save their homes and possibly every human on Sahara as the clock ticks down to zero.

Down The TBR Hole is a meme that revolves around cleansing your TBR of all those books you’re never going to read and sort through it all to know what’s actually on there.

Most of you probably know this feeling, your Goodreads TBR pile keeps growing and growing and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep adding, but you add more than you actually read. And then when you’re scrolling through your list, you realize that you have no idea what half the books are about and why you added them. Well that’s going to change!

It works like this:

Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.

Order on ascending date added.

Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.

Read the synopsesof the books

Decide: keep itor should it go?

I’m going to give this another swing, but this time going through my someday-maybe shelf. I have several shelves on my Goodreads, one of which my to-read shelf, on which I put all the books I really want to read (it’s about 30 books right now) and for all those books I’m not 100% sure I put them on my someday-maybe shelf. It has gathered dust for a while now and I think it’s time to go through it and sort it all out! I’m going to give myself three options: move to to-read shelf, delete, or keep on someday-maybe shelf. Continue reading “Down The TBR Hole v2.0 #4”→

Just today, I was sitting on a bench in front of my university and I was just looking at people and there was this guy. And he was beautiful. And I really just wanted to stare at him, but I felt so weird about it. You don’t just stare at random people you see, at least not if you don’t want to be creepy or flirty (or both). But I just want to stare at things I that are aesthetically pleasing, okay?!

It’s the same with book covers, I cannot not stare at a cover if it’s pretty. I’d love to just hang them on my walls so I could just stare at the magnificent cover art the artists and designers came up with all day. (good thing I’d not be creepy if I stared at my book covers, right? Only a little weird :P)

This post is inspired by Swetlana, who generously shared her post ideas with me so I could write a post today! Thank you!

I cannot not mention these amazing covers of This Savage Song and Our Dark Duet by Victoria Schwab. I just adore the coloring and the calligraphy! It looks even better up close and I am so glad to own both of them in these gorgeous editions. I would frame them if I could.

You have no idea how many times I’ve stood in the library or bookstore and thought, “wow” whenever I saw the cover of The Loneliness of Distant Beings by Kate Ling. The cover of the second book, The Glow of Fallen Stars, is also so pretty! I should just buy them, just for the sake of being able to look at them all day. (it has such mediocre reviews though! I’m sad 😦 )

This Tiny Perfect World by Lauren Gibaldi has the cutest cover! The colors are so pretty and pastel and I normally don’t like people on covers, but I do love illustrations and I adore this one. (Also, there’s a unicorn, and who can say no to a unicorn? Or is that a horse? I can’t see.)

Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman is obviously on this list, I adore all things space and I also adore the illustrations on it! When I first saw the cover, I thought it would be sci-fi but it’s completely not!

A Million Junes by Emily Henry has one of my favourite color combinations: blue and yellow. I love how the background is a bit vague, like, you don’t really see immediately what it is and it just looks really cool!

The cover of We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson is so simple but so pretty. Again, that color combination, but also the sunset vibe, the lines. I just love it! I also love the star-tracing or whatever it’s called when you take a long exposure picture of the night sky.

Whoever designed the cover of The Sun is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon deserves a medal. It’s so pretty and bright and colourful! I wish I owned a copy so I could stare at it. Or just remake the whole thing on my wall. That would be so cool (so much work though)

Kingdom of Ash and Briars by Hannah West has been on my TBR for so long and just because it’s so pretty! I adore the illustration and the shadow thing is just gorgeous. I wish I had this on my shelves or on my walls. I’d frame it.

Spellslinger and Shadowblack I only discovered recently but I’ve fallen head over heels for these covers. I adore the concept and the two people on the Spellslinger cover kind of remind me of a slightly younger version of Kell and Lila from the Shades of Magic series? I just want these on my shelves, please.

Which of these is your favourite? And which covers would you like to frame and put on your walls? Do you have a cover you’re so in love with you’d buy the book for no other reason than to have it on your shelf to stare at?

Good Angel is a self-published book about angels and demons but it’s really different from any angel and demons book I’ve ever read.

Good Angel by A.M. Blaushild

Iofiel is an ideal candidate to become a guardian angel, and help steer humans away from sin: she’s helpful, cheery, and utterly loyal. And, as the ‘angel of beauty’, it’s not like she has anything better to do.

Heaven and Hell long ago ran out of space: there’s too many humans these days, so both have come to a shaky truce – one school sheltered in the forests of Canada, hidden from humanity, where their young can study.

All seems well for Iofiel’s first days at university – her Archangel roommate is a bit uptight, and dealing with demons feels weird– but when a picked on demon confesses he’s too nervous to pursue his true passion of soul stealing… Iofiel promises she’ll major in it with him!

So much for being a proper angel. Her helpful impulse has repercussions that shake the school, and may just change the world forever. Or just end it.

Because that’s a possibility too.

I went into this book knowing close to nothing about it. I knew it was about angels and demons and that it had aro-ace representation. As someone who identifies as aro-ace, I was very excited to read an ownvoices book with that representation. I was so ready to finally read about that aro-ace character that I’ve been basically dreaming of, one that I could actually relate to. Sadly, that didn’t happen. More about that later.

Iofiel is a (new) angel and she’s a very naive, innocent character, I think those words describe her really well. She wants to help everyone and she apparently didn’t really need much of a reason to do so even if it made life for herself difficult. She becomes friends with demons who go to the same school as she does and basically does everything an angel shouldn’t do. Still, you cheer for her all the way to the end, because her innocence and sweet-heartedness make you fall a little in love with her.

“You don’t worship evil, you just pull it around on a leash a bit until it’s learned to do your bidding.”
“Remember when you were going to be a Guardian Angel, and really liked pancakes? Those were the good days. The golden days of, like, three weeks ago.”

I have this theory that every book has a strong point, or multiple ones. The more strong points it has, the better it is. These strong points can be the writing, the pacing, the tension, the characters, the dialogue, etc. I didn’t feel like this book had any outstanding points, it was good, but nothing was that good that it really stuck to me. The characters were really likeable, the dialogue was quite fun, the writing was okay, the story overall was interesting. But it wasn’t grabbing. It wasn’t as good as I would have loved it to be.

“When have I ever made someone see how beautiful something was, though? I don’t know if appreciating things really makes them… worthwhile. It’s about getting people to agree.”

So back to my original point. In the book, Iofiel is at first described as aromantic asexual, but to me, she doesn’t really seem to be either. Or maybe better said, she is really still questioning everything about her attraction. Though there is nothing wrong with that, I would have loved to see a bit more exploration on the topic of aromanticism and asexuality. I think now this book gives a bit of a wrong image of what aromanticism and asexuality are. I can’t really explain everything without spoiling anything so this’ll have to do.

Overall, I am giving this book 3.5 stars because it is fun, but not outstanding on any topic. Everything is really fun and interesting but it’s not really impressing me on any front. I did love that there was a lot of diversity in sexualities (bi, gay, agender, ace, and more) and skin-tones (since angels and demons don’t all look human they have skin-tones in all the colors of the rainbow). I loved that it explored topics of morality and how it crossed paths from good to evil and where to stand. I would really recommend this book if you like books about angels and morally gray characters. Overall this was a very cute book and a fun read!

In the past months, I’ve become a total V.E. Schwab fan and addict. I’ve devoured This Savage Song and the entirety of the Shades of Magic series and I absolutely loved it. It has been a while since my last Bookish Playlist posts, due to me being on vacation for most of July and August. But I’m back and this time with a Shades of Magic playlist!

The Shades of Magic series consists of A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows and A Conjuring of Light.